Ontology Based Specifications for Software Reliability Advancement

Executive Summary

Presently, achieving highly reliable software from the customer's perspective is a demanding job for all software engineers and reliability engineers. Consequently, reliability may be defined by the user's requirements. In addition, specifications are the basis for software development. Therefore, all means applicable ought to substantiate the specifications concerning requirements. To specifically and succinctly define the reliability, specifications must be written in formal and highly expressive language. Formal ontologies enable use of automated consistency checking of the software system with respect to declarative specifications. Therefore, the authors have proposed Ontology based protocol (Onto Reliability) for developing software specifications in support of reliability advancement.